Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later. Robert Morgan on poetry
You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does. Robert Morgan on poetry
The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English. Robert Morgan on poetry
Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners. Robert Morgan on poetry
The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end. Robert Morgan on poetry
Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques. Robert Morgan on poetry
Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form. Robert Morgan on poetry
The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse. Robert Morgan on poetry
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry. Robert Morgan on poetry
I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry. Robert Morgan on poetry
I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry. Robert Morgan on poetry
Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts. Robert Morgan on poetry
I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that. Robert Morgan on poetry
I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale. Robert Morgan on poetry
One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime. Robert Morgan on poetry
Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast. Robert Morgan on poetry
A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does. Robert Morgan on poetry
The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry. Robert Morgan on poetry
What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it. Robert Morgan on poetry
The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new. Robert Morgan on poetry